Paleotrickery: A lengthy lineage for leaf-mimicking insects

For at least 47 million years, some insects have escaped predators by looking like foliage and moving like swaying leaves, a new fossil find suggests.

Many creatures elude predators by blending into their surroundings. But the 3,000 or so species in an insect group called the phasmids take camouflage to an extreme, says Sonja Wedmann of the Institute for Paleontology in Bonn, Germany.

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